With His Touch
by FieryFaerie
Summary: Miroku made a vow not to make the same mistakes his father did, however his hands and heart have their own ideas. MirokuSango ONESHOT [Won first place for Best MirokuSango in the IYFG 3rd Quarter 2005]


**Title:** With His Touch  
**Written For:** **naybob**  
**Pairing or Character:** Miroku/Sango, Miroku!mama/Miroku!papa  
**Rating:** PG  
**Word Count:** 1,017  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Inuyasha. At all.  
**Summary:** Miroku made a vow not to make the same mistakes his father did, however his hands and heart have their own ideas.  
**Author's Note: **This fic was written for the livejournal community **iyflashfic**, which is a community where members request a certain pairing and genre, and someone else is assigned to write it. **naybob** asked for a dark backstory fic with Miroku/Sango. I've hopefully somehow managed to do that. I hope you like it, **naybob**! This takes place pretty much any time before the episode "The Most Dangerous Confession of the Monk, Miroku"

-o-O-o-

Miroku watched worriedly as Sango fiddled with the straps of her Hiraikotsu on the opposite side of their small campfire. She'd been silent all evening, which Miroku attributed to the fact that they had encountered Kohaku earlier that day. As far as they could tell, he was still under Naraku's spell, and they were no closer to finding a way to free him. Sango put up a tough front, and played the part of the brave warrior very well, but Miroku could see that her little act was beginning to fray around the edges.

Intending to comfort her, he slowly rose and made his way around their modest fire to sit by her. As he lowered himself to the ground, Sango feigned interest in a nearby tree root, checking to make sure that the tears she had been working so hard to suppress were still hidden. She turned back to Miroku with a small, brave smile, when suddenly…

:SMACK:

Miroku removed his hand from Sango's hip to assess the damage to his face, where an angry red handprint was beginning to form. As Sango muttered to herself something about lecherous monks needing to learn to keep their hands to themselves, Miroku scolded himself for failing to comfort Sango in the way he'd intended. At least she hadn't understood what exactly he'd meant with his ill-timed grope.

_'She can't know,'_ he thought sadly, pulling gently at the prayer beads that kept his wind tunnel sealed.

When Miroku was young, his father taught him everything that he knew. He learned to meditate, to use ofudas, to sense jyaki, and of course, the incredible importance of living each day as if it were the last. When he was older, Mushin would tell him stories of how the two of them would travel together, exorcising demons and spending quality time drinking copious amounts of sake in the local inns and taverns with the beautiful daughters of the wealthy men of the village.

Until Miroku's father met his mother. She was different from the other girls he'd met on his travels. She was strong and beautiful, but seemed to be fragile and lonely. Miroku's father fell for her, but was a man of few words, and couldn't find the right way to tell her how he felt. So he told her the only way he knew how. With his hands.

Over time, she came to understand just how deeply Miroku's father's feelings ran for her, and she confessed that she had fallen for him as well. They were soon married, and not long after, barely nine months, Miroku was born.

As he grew up, Miroku noticed that his father was constantly touching his mother. When they sat side by side his hand would rest on her thigh, when walking his hand would find the small of her back, and when they spoke his hand would gently brush across her cheeks, or he would run his fingers through her thick hair. Each touch said the same thing: "I love you."

When Miroku was still quite young, his father was devoured by his own wind tunnel. His mother was inconsolable. She stopped eating, and slowly wasted away before Miroku's eyes, and eventually died. She had simply lost the will to live. Mushin said that she'd died of a broken heart. Soon after her death, Miroku's own wind tunnel ripped open, and he made a vow to never do to any woman what his father had done to his mother.

So, Miroku followed his father's advice and lived each day as if it were the last, never allowing himself to stay in one place for too long, or get too close to any one woman for fear of history repeating itself. He dedicated his life to fulfilling his own selfish desires, even keeping his search for Naraku secondary to his own enjoyment of the few short years that he knew remained in his life.

Until he met Sango. He often groped her, just as he'd done to countless other women, but he soon realized that he touched her even when he wasn't lusting after her. He was falling for her. Of course, he couldn't tell her that, especially because she'd already been through so much. He couldn't put her through the same thing his mother had been through. All he could do was renew his vow and keep her at arm's length, and to make a new vow, to defeat Naraku no matter what, so that he might have a chance to make a life like the one his parents had shared before their untimely deaths.

Over time, Miroku began to notice that Sango had started to have feelings for him as well. He knew that he should have just stopped touching her altogether, to keep her safe, but he found that his hands worked of their own accord, silently telling her how he felt as he struggled to keep it hidden. He tried to play it off like it was just his perverted ways again, but in his heart, he knew what it meant.

Miroku glanced up at Sango, ready to apologize for the extremely inappropriate timing of his seemingly perverted action, but noticed that she'd stopped muttering to herself, and that her face had gone a rather lovely shade of crimson.

"Sango?" he asked nervously, but she just turned her face away, and, if possible, turned an even deeper shade of red. He repeated her name, and she slowly turned her face back towards him, eyes wide with sudden understanding.

Miroku panicked. _'She knows,'_ he thought, alarmed at the thought of what her unexpected realization could mean. She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, Miroku's flustered hand found its way back to her hip, and she automatically slapped him hard, before storming off into the woods.

_'Not yet, Sango'_ he thought with a sigh, staring at his right hand, _'If we can just defeat Naraku, then I can tell you what my hands have been saying all along'_

_'I love you.'_


End file.
